


just say the word, i'll go

by atlantisairlock



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Groundhog Day, Not Really Character Death, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 01:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17478992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: The plan is perfect, on paper.It’s just a pity things don’t always translate off so well.Or, the Groundhog Day AU.





	just say the word, i'll go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xscarletblanket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xscarletblanket/gifts).



> hope you enjoy this work, superxblanket! not exactly fluff, but it ends happily. 
> 
> ft. implied amita x constance & nine ball x tammy + my personal 'constance dropped out of med school' headcanon.
> 
> title from 'way back home' by shaun x conor maynard x sam feldt.

Five years is a long time.

It’s a sentence that finds its way into Debbie’s thoughts every single day leading up to the Met Gala. Five years she spent behind bars, bringing contraband into the yard and organising the other women into proper little teams that moved like clockwork and, of course, planning the heist. Lying on her thin mattress, staring up at the ceiling, running through plan over plan in her head.

Five years is a long time - long enough for her to craft the perfect job. To pick out every point where something could mess up, and fix it. She dreams it, running through the halls of the Met with six other figures, faces shadowy and indistinct, and when she awakens she can still feel the cold ache of jewels around her throat. She was born for this, raised in this life, and when she gets out, ready to amass her team, she knows exactly where she’s going.

The plan is perfect, on paper.

It’s just a pity things don’t always translate off so well.

 

 

She ends up sitting in a holding cell at the end of the night with her head between her knees and wondering how she could be so stupid, how she could have been so obvious about planting the jewels on Claude that she could have let herself be caught just by him raising the alarm. She’d planned every second of that moment in her head, and she still let her rage and fury from years before slip her up, let his gaze linger too long on her face, let him -

He fucked up her life five years ago and she let him do it again, and Debbie hears Lou’s words in her mind, from that day on the rocks by the sea, and she feels it choke her. Lou. The girls. She has no idea what’s happened to them, after she was unceremoniously dragged out of the Met by the guards and transferred to police custody. They found her earpiece, so they know she’s not working alone. And she would let the world end before she gave them up over an interrogation, but it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out themselves, and then -

Her one chance, and she fucked up. She fucked up and soon the girls will go down with her, or they will spend their lives running, looking over their shoulders, _scared,_ and it’s all her fault. Debbie feels something roaring inside her chest, the beginnings of a scream, maybe, something she can barely contain. Her life is over. 

She closes her eyes and clenches her jaw and tries to breathe and thinks _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I fucked up I fucked up I -_

 

 

When she wakes up the next morning she’s back in her bed, and for one brief, wondrous moment, nothing is wrong. She’s alone in her room in the spacious warehouse Lou got them and she’s sprawled on her bed above the covers and everything is fine.

And then she remembers. 

Debbie straightens up so fast she nearly topples off the bed entirely, looking wildly around her and wondering if she’s gone _completely fucking insane._ She’s in her room. In the warehouse. Which she never thought she was going to see again less than twenty-four hours ago, because she was sitting _in a holding cell._ After royally fucking up the heist and getting arrested. And here she is and there she’s not and _what the fuck is going on?_

Very cautiously she looks down at herself. She’s wearing the soft shirt and shorts she remembers wearing to sleep the night before the actual Met Gala, and when she glances over the the cupboard, door ajar, she can see the dress Tammy got for her to wear _to_ the Gala itself.

 _Am I dead?_ Debbie wonders. _Did I die? Am I hallucinating in the cell right now?_

But everything feels solid enough. When she carefully inches off the bed, the floor doesn’t warp or fall apart beneath her feet. The view outside her window is the same it always was, and when she peers out her door, she can smell breakfast sizzling on the stove and hear Amita talking to Nine Ball, their voices rising up from the common area -

Which is truly and incomprehensibly weird, because if Debbie thinks back, the morning of the Gala, the day before, that’s what she saw when she made her way downstairs -

Somehow or another she gets changed and washed up and goes for breakfast and all the while her brain is shrieking _WHAT IS GOING ON?_ Nobody seems to notice, or act out of character. Lou serves up plates of eggs and toast and fruit, and Tammy hands all of them coffee, and Debbie is getting the most serious case of deja vu she’s ever felt in her life.

Conversation is light and airy, but Debbie doesn’t join in - just picks at her food and tries not to hyperventilate while she tries frantically to figure out what is happening and how she’s back in the warehouse.

And then Lou grins around the table, smile lazy, and speaks up. “You guys ready to rob the Met today?”

Debbie drops her cup of coffee, which smashes to pieces on the floor. Constance lets out a yelp as she nearly gets hot coffee on her legs. “Shit! Jesus fuck, Debbie! What was that?”

“What did you just say?” Debbie asks, eyes on Lou, completely ignoring Constance’s outburst. “Lou, what are you talking about?”

Lou stares back at her like _Debbie’s_ the crazy one. “What?”

“Robbing the Met!” Debbie yells. She’s vaguely aware that her voice is rising, louder than it should be by far, and she’s out of her chair, hands against the table, this close to completely freaking out. “Lou, what the hell do you mean?”

Everyone is looking at her now. Rose has her hand to her mouth, expression full of fear, and everyone else looks confused and concerned and more than a little bit scared. Lou’s gaze doesn’t waver, but her eyebrows furrow, the way Debbie knows means she doesn’t know what the hell Debbie is going on about. “The Met,” she says, softly, cautiously. “The heist? Stealing the Toussaint? Like you’ve been preparing us to do for weeks now?”

“Debbie, are you okay?” Tammy’s at her side now, gently touching her elbow, raising her hand to Debbie’s forehead. “Are you running a fever?”

Debbie feels frozen, unable to even breathe. She thinks Tammy shakes her head at Amita’s query - probably about her temperature, Debbie supposes - but she and Lou help Debbie back to her room while the other girls clean up the mess in the kitchen. Lou sits on her bed and gets her to lie down, sighing. “What’s wrong, Deb? Having second thoughts about the heist or something? It’s a little late for that, you know.”

“No,” Debbie replies, wanting to follow up but not being completely sure how to say _we literally attempted the heist yesterday but I fucked up and I ended up in a holding cell in police custody with no way to contact any of you and I have no idea how we’re back here again_ without Lou and Tammy genuinely thinking she’s lost her mind. Which Debbie isn’t sure she’s hasn’t, or maybe she’s having a fever dream, because what other explanation can there possibly be?

Lou’s smiling, though - the smile of someone who’s been Debbie’s partner in crime for over half her life, now, and has become thoroughly used to Debbie doing the craziest shit without explanation. “Good,” she says. “Get some rest and get ready for tonight, yeah?”

She can hear Tammy still talking urgently to Lou when they exit her room, and Lou’s soothing reassurances. Debbie reaches for her phone and checks the date, which confirms that it’s actually the day of the Met Gala. 

She’s on autopilot for the rest of the day. Everything goes by in a blur, like it’s happening very, very far away, and she’s so distracted and confused that she doesn’t play her role right. She’s meant to give orders, to give direction - the girls have been prepared to follow what she says to the letter, which was how the heist was meant to go off without a hitch. Debbie never prepared them to improvise to the point where they could basically conduct it on their own.

It’s how and why they end up missing their chance altogether. Debbie doesn’t give Constance her cue in time, and Daphne’s not alone in the bathroom when she’s puking her guts out, and there’s no opportunity for Constance to slip in and lift the Toussaint off her neck. The plan goes completely into chaos - everyone’s going crazy over the line and Lou is swearing a blue streak and Debbie has no idea what to do.

They end up in the warehouse, after, with the Toussaint returned safely to Cartier’s vaults and all of them in the common area flipping the fuck out. Rose is scared and Amita is confused and Nine Ball is disbelieving and they’re all bewildered, and Lou -

Lou is furious. Lou storms into her room without a word to any of them and they hear crashes and thuds for a good fifteen minutes while Debbie sits quietly on the sofa with her face in her hands.

“We’ll figure it out,” Tammy says softly, placing a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. “She’ll come around, and we’ll work it out.”

It’s a fever dream, Debbie thinks, but it feels so real. She goes to sleep curled up in her bed, in her room, alone, and wants the day to just end.

 

 

And then she wakes up.

On the same day.

Again.

 

 

In hindsight she’s a complete moron, but it takes Debbie three runs to realise she might be in a time loop, and then another four runs to actually accept that fact as truth.

In her defence, what the fuck.

Eight days, or really, no days later, she wakes up again on the morning of the Met Gala and realises - she’s being given a second chance.

There was a reality. In that reality, she fucked up the heist and got herself thrown in jail. Someone, somehow, is giving her a second, third, fourth… another chance. Someone is giving her another chance to make good on her word - to pull off the perfect heist. She’s been fucking up, here and there, and the heist always goes wrong, but she can do it. She just has to do it _perfectly,_ and she’s out. That’s the key.

 _I can do this,_ she thinks, looking at her list. Five years in prison, thinking, planning, waiting. She can do this. She _will_.

 

 

Only she just keeps screwing up, and she can’t fucking figure out _why._

On one run, early on, Lou doesn’t put enough of the drug in Daphne’s soup. By the time it takes effect, the Gala’s almost over and the plan is scuppered. Debbie fixes that. Something else fucks up.

On another run, she gets distracted trying to avoid Claude, cues Constance at the wrong time, and she gets caught. Constance yells over the earpiece for all of them to leave her and get the fuck _out_ while she’s getting tackled and cuffed, and they do, which ends up with all of them sitting in the common area, with Lou talking urgently to Nine Ball trying to figure out how to bail Constance out, and Tammy and Rose trying to comfort a crying Amita. The next day Constance is sitting at the dinner table playing a game on her phone when Debbie comes down for breakfast, and Debbie nearly cries when Constance gives her a grin and jaunty salute. She fixes that. Something else fucks up.

On yet another run - a horrible run that leaves her in bad form for the next three runs because every time she looks at Lou she can’t breathe - she isn’t in place in time, when they’re evacuating the Gala. The guards catch Lou and Yen stealing the crown jewels. Apparently they’ve been authorised to use lethal force, which is why she hears gunshots when she’s running to the exhibit, why she gets there to see Lou laid out on the ground, eyes glassy, blood pooling beneath her, chest so still, so, so still -

She fixes that. Something else fucks up - but never that again. Never, never again. Other things screw up, sometimes the same things in different ways, but Debbie never again doesn’t reach her position in time to hold the guards off. Losing any of the other girls - it’s a tragedy, it’s _awful,_ and Debbie refuses to consider the heist perfect if she has to sacrifice one of them. But losing Lou is non-negotiable. She will burn the world to ashes and walk into the last circle of hell before she lets Lou die.

Never again.

 

 

Five years of planning did not prepare Debbie for _so much_ to actually go wrong during the heist, but apparently, here she is.

Things keep screwing up. Over and over and over. The severity with which a run goes wrong fluctuates wildly, but the end result is always the same - they never get away with the Toussaint, _and_ the crown jewels, _and_ with everyone safe. They do a couple of runs where they manage to steal the Toussaint but not the crown jewels, and vice versa, and at some point Debbie wonders if she might be perfectly fucking fine with that because she is so, _so_ tired of doing the heist again and again and again.

She lost count around the fiftieth time, but sometimes when she’s falling asleep it feels like she’s lived this one day longer than she’s lived her entire life up to this point. It feels like she’s spent the equivalent of a hundred years running the heist over and over again, trying to make it perfect. Trying to get them out safe, all of them, ready to get rich.

She can’t give up hope. Literally, she can’t - she learned this on one of the worst runs that she still has nightmares about, when she decided to screw the heist to hell and they ended up not just getting caught but getting in a literal car chase. So far it’s been the only run where she died, thrown off the back of Lou’s motorbike straight into an oncoming police car. She’d woken up the next morning gasping for breath, clutching her chest, every part of her body still aching. Whoever or whatever is trapping her in the loop, they don’t like it when she squanders her chance because she’s tired. She can’t live that again. So she keeps trying her best. She has to.

 

 

Some things stay relatively constant. Claude and Daphne always end up making out near the crown jewel exhibits - gross, and in god’s name _why?_ \- and Tammy always has to chase their waiter to get him to do his job and get the Toussaint to Amita.

And Lou. Lou is a constant, because the others… Tammy is angry, sometimes, when they fail. Other times, she cries, especially when Nine Ball doesn’t make it back to the warehouse with them. Constance runs the gamut between exhausted and sullen and scared and furious and confused and just _not there_ \- for some reason she gets caught the most, and there was a time where she got arrested ten runs in a row before Debbie figured it out and fixed her shit. There’s a eighty-twenty chance of Nine Ball turning on her heel and taking off when things get chaotic - she usually doesn’t, but when she does, the run is usually really, really bad. The point is - the other girls’ reactions change, depending on how and why they fail.

But Lou? Lou is _always_ angry. If they both end up in the warehouse without one of them getting arrested or being separated, Lou always comes up to her eventually and tells her the fuck off. Lou takes her to task for every single thing she did wrong that led to their failure, and all Debbie can do is sit there and take it. It’s a good thing, in a sense - Lou shouts at her in this way that makes it easy for Debbie to pick out how and why she fucked up and figure out how to fix it the next run. And, of course, she’s Lou. Lou knows her better than anyone else in her life. Debbie _owes_ Lou. Lou is the reason why she’s even alive to be stuck in this time loop today, why she didn’t die twenty or thirty years ago, pulling stupid, reckless cons trying to prove herself. Lou deserves absolutely everything Debbie can give her and a hundred times more, and if reading Debbie the riot act after every failed attempt is what she wants, it’s her prerogative. Debbie sits, and listens, and tries to fix it, every single time.

There’s a run where they’re the only two who make it back to the warehouse. Debbie staggers past the front door with Lou’s arm around her, holding her up, and ends up in the bathroom while Lou stitches her up, remaining silent the entire time.

“I’m sorry,” Debbie says, eventually, when Lou’s finishing up with cleaning the abrasion on her knee. _I’m sorry this run was a bad one. I’m sorry the girls got caught. I’m sorry I keep failing. I’m sorry we're stuck in this hell and you don't even know it. I'm sorry._

Lou presses her lips together. “I don’t need your apology,” she says, low and quiet, the undercurrent of fury unmistakeable. “Just do better, Debbie. Just fucking do better.”

 _I’m trying,_ Debbie wants to reply, but Lou doesn’t give her the chance, just packs the first aid kit back up with a solid click. “Go to bed. We’ll figure out how to get the others out tomorrow.”

There won’t be a tomorrow, of course. They’ll wake up and all the girls will be at the breakfast table again and Lou will be dishing out eggs and toast and fruit but she doesn’t know that, and it’s going to keep being this way until Debbie figures out how to pull the heist off perfectly. “Lou,” she tries, starts, because there’s so much she wants to say that she doesn’t know how to, so much -

“Go to bed,” Lou repeats, standing and leaving the bathroom without another word.

Debbie goes.

 

 

Some things stay relatively constant.

Some things change.

At some point, Debbie starts wondering if this isn’t about a chance. Maybe someone or something in the universe isn’t giving her chance after chance to redeem herself, to prove herself, to make the heist perfect. Around what _feels_ like the five hundredth time she’s redoing the heist, it starts feeling like a punishment. Having to fail over and over again, reminding her that she’s always been incompetent, always been unworthy, always been not enough.

And then, things change. She does a double take the first run she’s standing at the toilets waiting to hold the guards off, and one of them turns out to be a woman even though she wasn’t on the list Tammy ran through with her before the heist. The guard follows Daphne into the bathroom and keeps watch over her, and they lose their chance.

The next run, everything is back to normal. Debbie stays wary, until something else fucks up that she can fix. She fixes it. A couple runs later, the guard in the kitchen kicks in the door of Amita’s workspace before Tammy can plant the fake necklace, something he’s _never_ done before. Another few runs after that, some drunk driver just straight-up totals the truck Nine Ball’s working out of midway through the heist.

If anything, it’s a hundred times more frustrating than anything else Debbie’s been screwing up, because how the fuck is she supposed to prevent things like that? Most unpreventable aberrations like that happen just once and then never again, but every time they do, it means another wasted run, even if she does everything else perfectly, and she has no idea how to stop them from happening.

“Why are you doing this?” She asks, one night, to… whoever’s making the loop happening, whoever they might be. If this is a punishment, which she’s really beginning to think it might be, she gets it. She has done a lot that warrants punishment, but why something so cruel? Why give her something so out of her control?

 

 

The answer comes to her about maybe twenty runs later, or at least something she thinks might be the answer - nobody is punishing her. She’s punishing herself.

And it makes sense. It makes sense, because she _deserves_ that, for screwing up that first time, and for so many other things - trusting Claude. Landing herself in jail. Hurting Lou. Leaving Lou behind. Lou, always Lou.

She can live with that. She can live with having to do this, again and again, for the rest of her life, always failing, always being so close to succeeding, but never making it. She deserves it. She can live with that.

But the other girls are here, too. The other girls might not be aware that they’re reliving this day again and again, but they are. Debbie has been getting to know them over the past few weeks, months, years, for some of them. She knows Constance wants to use her share to go back to medical school. She knows Amita wants so badly to travel and see the world. She knows Rose wants to start a new line after paying off her debts, and Nine Ball wants her own pool hall, and Tammy has two kids to go back to.

She knows Lou wants to buy a new bike and set off cross-country with the wind in her hair and Debbie wants so badly to see her revving up, wants to see her in a new leather jacket and bike helmet, wants Lou to grin at her and hold out her hand and tell her to _jump on, come with me, Debbie, let’s go, wherever we want, wherever_ -

She needs to get them out, and for that, she needs to succeed. She has to.

 

 

Maybe it’s muscle memory. She starts being able to do entire chunks of the heist on autopilot, moving smoothly across the halls of the museum like she’s walked them her entire life. Things still keep fucking up, but Debbie keeps getting closer and closer to pulling off the heist perfectly. The fifth run in a row where they make it halfway without screwing up at any point, with Debbie not needing to fix anything, she starts really, really believing she can do it.

And then, one run, she does. One run, they get in there without a hitch. She calls the cues perfectly and plants the diamonds on Claude with no issue. Lou drugs Daphne’s soup, Constance lifts the Toussaint off her neck, and Amita takes it apart in her cubicle. Tammy finds the fake necklace, Nine Ball sneaks in and Lou steals the crown jewels while Debbie shouts furious German at the beleaguered staff.

Everything goes smoothly. Nothing goes wrong. Debbie’s heart is pounding when she exits the museum with her share of the diamonds and waits on the curb for Lou to meet her. They’ve never made it this far without something going spectacularly tits-up. After what feels like thousands upon thousands of runs, Debbie can barely believe she might have finally gotten it right. 

Lou walks into her line of sight, decked in her pantsuit, grinning at her, and Debbie feels the breath leave her lungs.

They did it.

They stole the Toussaint, and the crown jewels, and everyone is out safe, and they’re going to rendezvous in the warehouse and celebrate.

They did it.

She finally, finally did it.

 

 

The mood in the warehouse is ecstatic, when they return. Lou pops a couple bottles of champagne and they put on some music and everyone gets gloriously drunk, cheering and celebrating and talking at the tops of their voices. There’s still a lot they have to do - fence the jewels and cover their tracks and all that - but they did it. The girls don’t know it, but it’s finally happened, after so many runs, so many tries, and Debbie is so happy and relieved she could cry.

It’s the first run in a long time that Lou isn’t angry with her at all. She drops down by Debbie’s side on the sofa and rests her head on her shoulder. “We did it.”

Debbie makes a soft noise of assent. Lou smiles up at her. “Well done, Ocean. You were right about your plan. And now we’re going to be rich.”

“Yeah,” Debbie agrees, smiling back. “Going to get a new bike with your share and ride off into the sunset, huh?”

She expects Lou to chuckle and agree. Not for her to keep staring at her, quiet, searching. Debbie can’t stop looking back at her, and some sort of tension builds between them. They’re so close, bodies pressed together, and Lou looks so beautiful, and this is the happiest Debbie thinks she’s ever been in so long, and she wants, she wants, what does she want?

“I don’t know yet,” Lou replies, turning her face away and reaching for her glass, bringing it to her lips and taking a long drink. The moment is broken, almost instantly, and Debbie feels disappointment and confusion and sadness mingling inside her chest, inexplicable. “Come on. Another drink for you?”

“Yeah,” Debbie says, holding out her glass, and trying not to think about it. She finally succeeded, finally broke the loop after _so fucking long._ She should celebrate. Everything else, she can think about tomorrow. _Tomorrow._ The word feels so sweet. It’s something she hasn’t been able to consider for what feels like an eternity, and now she’s finally going to get it.

Her sleep is dreamless and sweet. It’s good.

 

 

And then the next morning she wakes up in the same day again, for the nth time, the same way she has for the last ten fifty hundred thousand days, and Debbie feels her whole world ending.

 

 

She’s not proud of it, but for the first fifteen minutes after she wakes up, the day after the first perfect run, she just screams and cries and punches the wall until her knuckles are bleeding, until Amita and Nine Ball rush up the stairs from the common area into her room and drag her away and hold her back, frantically asking what’s wrong, _Debbie, what’s wrong, what’s happening, stop, it’s okay, it’s okay,_ but none of it is okay, _nothing_ is okay, because she’s back here again. She did the heist perfectly, she didn’t fuck up, she finally succeeded, and she is still back here, again, again, again.

“What have I done wrong,” she screams, hysterical, beating her still-bleeding fists into Nine Ball’s chest. “What the fuck did I do wrong this time? What else do I still need to do? What else do I need to do to get out of here? What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong?”

“What?” Amita says, desperately trying to stop her from hurting Nine Ball. “Debbie, what are you talking about? You haven’t done anything - shit, Lou, Tammy, help, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know why she’s like this - “

_I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up._

_What did I do wrong?_

_What am I doing wrong?_

_What else do I need to do?_

 

 

Another two runs, and the heist goes off perfectly, again.

One run where she gets distracted, and then ten perfect runs in a row.

Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. One run where she gets sloppy and Constance gets caught because of a basic fucking mistake she corrected a thousand runs ago. Debbie mentally kicks herself and the counter in her head resets. One, again. Two. Five. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty.

Again and again and again. Perfect run after perfect run after perfect run. Nothing changes. The smoothness with which the heist happens. Lou’s smile so bright when they meet on the road after exiting the museum. The joyous atmosphere in the warehouse when they all rendezvous.

Again. Again. Again.

She’s so tired. Every morning she wakes up, and she’s so tired. She’s so tired of seeing Lou smile like she’s won the world and knowing in her bones they’re just going to have to do this again. She’s so tired of that moment of tension between them on the couch coming to nothing. She’s so tired of sleeping alone, doing this alone, being alone.

It hits her, somewhere between the thousandth run and the ten thousandth, who knows anymore, that she’s in love with Lou. She wants Lou out of this loop, she wants Lou to be happy, she wants _Lou,_ and if she ever gets out of this fucking loop, Debbie thinks, she’s going to tell Lou she loves her. No more bullshit. It’s taken so long, and she’s wasted so much fucking time, lived the same day over and over and over, and every single run it’s seeming less and less likely she’ll _ever_ make it out, but if she does - she’s telling Lou she loves her. If she has to spend the rest of eternity in this loop, she will always, always love Lou. It is the only thing she is sure about. 

It’s taken her this much, her whole life and being trapped in this unending, unmoving hell, for her to realise how much she loves Lou, and maybe she’s that much of an idiot that it has had to come to this.

But here she is.

Here she is.

 

 

Again and again and again.

Over and over and over.

Trying. Praying. Hoping. Wanting.

And finally, one day, coming to terms.

She’s never getting out.

Never.

 

 

See, the thing is - if you’re never going to get out, there’s no point.

If you’re never going to get out, you might as well throw it to the wind and say to hell with it.

If you’re never going to get out, fuck it.

She’s never going to be able to keep her word of getting out and telling Lou she loves her.

 _Fuck it, what have I been waiting for anyway,_ Debbie thinks, when they’re on that same road for the tenth fiftieth hundredth time, watching Lou in that pantsuit for the tenth fiftieth hundredth time, walking down to her for the tenth fiftieth hundredth time, and when she gets close enough, Debbie pulls her in by the waist and kisses her - kisses her like the world is falling to pieces around them both, like she’s got twenty-four hours to live, like she’s never going to see Lou again, and maybe all of that is true, really, and what does it matter? None of it matters except the way Lou melts against her, the way she kisses back so hungry and desperate, her hands coming to rest on Debbie’s hips. It is the best thing Debbie’s done in her life, and always will be.

When they finally, finally step apart, Lou is laughing - eyes sparkling, mirth evident, and the expression on her face is so soft and open and loving it makes Debbie’s heart hurt. “So you finally figured it out.”

“Figured out that I’m gone on you? Yeah,” Debbie says, feeling a smile tug at her lips. “After, what, years?”

“Years,” Lou agrees, soft, reaching for her hand and tangling her fingers in Debbie’s, and _oh,_ how has she never done this before? In one or five or ten thousand runs, how has she never done this? Living through this for the rest of eternity will be, will have been, worth it just for this - for the way it feels to have Lou’s hand in hers, Lou’s lips on hers. Debbie squeezes Lou’s hand and wraps the other around the back of Lou’s neck, gently pulling her close to kiss her again. “I love you, Lou Miller. I’m so fucking in love with you.” _Just to hear her say it back,_ Debbie thinks, hopes, pleads. _Just that._

Lou’s smile is blinding, the most beautiful thing in the world. “I love you too,” she says, so soft, so real, the truest thing in Debbie’s life.

 

 

The celebration back at the warehouse goes about the same, only it feels less hollow now that they get to hold hands and press close and for the first time in thousands of runs, she doesn’t sleep alone. Lou lets herself into Debbie’s room without hesitation and lets Debbie curl into her embrace, the length of her body against Debbie’s warm and comforting. Debbie wonders if they’ll wake up together in the morning, to go through the heist again, or if Lou will be back in her bed, blissfully unaware of what happened. It doesn’t matter, she decides. This, right here, right now, is enough. It will have to be.

She’s just about to fall asleep when Lou’s voice drifts out of the darkness, sleepy and sweet. “For the record, when I said you’d finally figured it out, I didn’t just mean this.”

“Mm?” Debbie murmurs in response, not sure what she means. 

“I meant the asterisk,” Lou replies, pressing a kiss to the base of Debbie’s neck, and it’s the last thing she remembers before she falls asleep.

 

 

When she wakes up the next morning, she’s in her bed, and the sun is streaming through the window, and she’s still wrapped in Lou’s arms, and Debbie says a silent prayer to the loop for allowing her that one mercy.

And then she glances at her phone and the date has _changed_ and she quite nearly falls out of bed entirely. As it is she shoots up so fast she hears something creak and grabs for her phone, looking at the date, the date, the _date,_ unable to believe her eyes.

One day after the Met Gala.

_Tomorrow._

She feels Lou shift beside her, and turns to see her blinking open, yawning. “Mm. Deb?”

“Lou, shit, Lou,” Debbie says, grabbing her arm. “Lou, the date - what are we doing today? Lou, what are we doing today?”

Lou sighs, squinting at her and looking like she’s about to roll over and go back to sleep. “I don’t know. Maybe start working out with Tammy how to fence the diamonds. Get Nine Ball to clean up any security footage we might have overlooked, if she can. Check the news and see if Cartier’s figured out they’ve got a fake yet. Sleep in some more. I personally like the last option, if you don't mind.”

She is _definitely_ not proud, but Debbie instantly starts crying _so hard_ Lou’s eyes widen and she throws the covers off her, moving forward to grasp Debbie’s shoulders. “Hey. _Hey._ Debbie. What did I say? What is it? Baby?”

Debbie is dimly aware of Lou cupping her face, pressing her forehead to Debbie’s, still asking what’s wrong, but she can’t breathe. Her mind is whirling, thinking, processing through last night, yesterday, all the runs - all this time. _The asterisk._ An asterisk - standing by the sea, on the rocks, with Lou, _a job within a job, why does there always have to be an asterisk,_ framing Claude, stealing the crown jewels, the flashbang of the Toussaint hiding the real reason behind staging the heist, the loop, _the loop,_ all the runs, kissing Lou, _finally_ kissing Lou, finally telling Lou she loved her, punishment, a second chance -

It wasn’t about the heist. It wasn’t about staging the perfect heist. She could have run the heist perfectly another hundred more times and it wouldn’t have mattered. She wasn’t punishing herself for messing it up, not really. She was punishing herself for losing Lou, for letting Lou down, for letting Lou _go,_ for making Lou wait all this time - for Lou. The asterisk was Lou, and the point was to finally, _finally_ do right by Lou so she could exit the loop and see _tomorrow._

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, cutting Lou off. “I’m sorry I took so long to tell you when I’ve loved you for half my life. I’m sorry I hurt you, and let you down, and left you behind. You’ve always been - Lou, you’ve always been the one, and I'm sorry I ever made you feel as if you weren't. I love you so much, I always have, I always - I'm sorry.” 

Lou falls silent, staring at her, and then slowly leans in and kisses her, soft and gentle, brushing away her tears. “Love you too, you idiot, stop apologising,” she says fondly. “Debbie, why are you crying? What happened?”

Debbie laughs tiredly, dropping her head against Lou’s shoulder and sighing. “It’s a really long story.”

“We have time,” Lou says, tipping her chin up so they can look at each other. Debbie smiles, leaning in for another kiss, reveling in the way Lou kisses back, in the fact that she gets to do this today, tomorrow, every day, for as long as she wants. Maybe not for _eternity,_ but to be able to look forward to having the next day with Lou - that’s enough. More than.

Always.

“Yeah,” Debbie says. “We have time.”


End file.
